Iran Strikes US and Allied Bases Across the Gulf as Conflict Enters Its Seventh Month
Iran's military struck satellite communication systems, equipment depots, and fighter aircraft hangars at the Ahmad al-Jaber air base in Kuwait with missiles and drones, according to a statement carried by Iranian state television on Thursday. The same announcement said Iran attacked forces and radar systems at the Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates. Oil prices jumped on Thursday following the strikes on bases in both countries (The Guardian).
Kuwait's ministry of defence said on X that its air defences intercepted missile and drone attacks during what it called a "blatant Iranian aggression." Bahrain and Jordan also reported that their air defence systems intercepted several Iranian air attacks on Wednesday (The Guardian).
The September 1 strikes fit a pattern that has held since hostilities broke out on February 28, 2026, when US-Israeli airstrikes triggered a full-scale conflict pitting the United States and Israel against Iran and its regional allies. Iran's September 1 attacks on US and allied bases across the region were described as retaliation for US strikes on Iranian targets, with the IRGC claiming it launched a wave of strikes targeting US bases including in Iraq and the UAE (NBC News; ISW). U.S. Central Command announced it had completed strikes on IRGC targets inside Iran on September 1 (CENTCOM).
Iran's state television also cited the army as saying it had targeted a US base in Kuwait and a residential complex used by US personnel, while the IRGC claimed pilots were killed in an attack on a US base, amid a US threat to leave "very little left" of Iran (Reuters; Sky News).
Among the weapons Iran used that week was the Kheibar Shekan medium-range ballistic missile system. Its solid fuel motor eliminates lengthy fuelling, enabling rapid deployment to avoid detection. The missile can be armed with a powered and steerable final stage designed to defeat anti-missile interceptors. Iran claimed as recently as the end of August that it maintained both missile stockpiles and the manufacturing capacity to sustain them. IRGC spokesperson Brig Gen Hossein Mohebbi said the assumption that Iran's missile stockpiles would be depleted "proved incorrect," adding that Iran's missile capability "has remained sustained and its missile production has continued" (The Guardian).
CENTCOM's posture statement asserts that US forces have damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran's ballistic missile, drone, and naval defense industrial base, with more than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing targets. CENTCOM Commander General Michael "Erik" Kurilla completed a 10-day trip to the Middle East on August 15 (CENTCOM). These undated official claims stand in tension with Iran's assertions of sustained production capability. The gap between US damage assessments and Iranian operational output is a central metric for whether the current tempo of exchanges can hold or will intensify.
Earlier in the conflict, the US struck Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming Iran planned to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran's attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain, which host US military bases, followed US strikes to open the Strait. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained far below prewar levels as of this week, keeping oil prices elevated ahead of US midterm elections (The Guardian; Reuters).
The Trump administration described its new sanctions regime against Iran as an "economic D-day." Israel's defence minister Israel Katz offered a notably cautious read: while the sanctions appeared effective, he said signs indicated that heavy economic pressure on Iran and fear of regime collapse "may push Tehran to desperate steps" (The Guardian).
The broader context here is a strategic dilemma for Washington and its allies. The sanctions architecture is designed to degrade Iran's war-fighting capacity over time. But Iran's demonstrated ability to sustain missile launches against targets across four countries suggests that the degradation, while substantial by CENTCOM's own accounting, has not yet crossed a threshold where Tehran cannot project power. The Kheibar Shekan's solid-fuel design, allowing launch within minutes from concealed positions, compounds the intercept problem for Gulf air defences even after months of sustained US bombing of Iran's production infrastructure. And the more pressure mounts on the regime, the less predictable its escalation calculus becomes. Iran has also launched missiles at two US bases in Jordan following a US attack on Larak Island in southern Iran in late August, and has previously targeted a "hostile" US vessel with cruise missiles in the Strait (Al Jazeera; Reuters).
The multiple interception claims from Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan confirm that at least some Iranian munitions reached the airspace of host nations. The proportion intercepted versus the proportion that struck their targets remains undisclosed by all parties. For the Gulf states caught between US basing commitments and Iranian retaliation, each exchange narrows the political space for neutrality.
